Ottawa: Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino on Tuesday defended his decision to amend the federal gun control bill. He said that with the proposed amendment, there is talk of banning assault-style rifles in the future, which will not have any impact on the guns currently available in the market.
“Our goal is to pull the reconnaissance of the perpetrators so that they can’t carry out incidents like mass shootings and use AR-15-style guns,” Mendicino said.
Earlier on Monday, Mendicino had announced a revised package of amendments to the government’s Bill C-21. It detailed the new criminal code on the definition of banned assault-style weapons.
Under this, a permanent ban on new assault-style weapons has been advocated.
The amendments proposed by the federal government refer to weapons that are not handguns, of which semi-automatically discharge the center fire emission and which are manufactured with detachable magazines with a capacity of six cartridges or more.
Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill on Tuesday, Mendicino said the government did not create the definition in a fabricated manner on its own, but was prepared in consultation with law enforcement agencies, advocacy groups and experts.